8th Ave Neighborway Project

8th Avenue Neighborway Project

The goal of the 8th Avenue Neighborway Project is to make 8th Avenue a safer and more pleasant place to walk or bike to neighborhood destinations and nearby parks. This project seeks to bring traffic volumes on 8th Avenue down to a level that fosters safe biking and walking and reduces conflicts between people biking and passing vehicles. 8th Avenue carries 2 to 3 times the amount of vehicle traffic when compared to parallel routes. These high traffic volumes (including large vehicles like tour buses), are not in keeping with City priorities for 8th Avenue, which is identified as a key street for biking and walking into Golden Gate Park. Our main tool to accomplish our goal is to install traffic diversion devices which allow people biking and walking to continue along 8th Avenue, but do not allow motor vehicles to use 8th Avenue as a through-route.

The SFMTA Livable Streets project team is currently refining its project design using a toolkit of traffic calming measures for the 8th Avenue corridor and surrounding streets. These measures could include traffic or turn restrictions, speed humps, raised crosswalks, or other elements. The 8th Avenue Neighborway project most recently held a public open house meeting on October 18, 2017 to present a proposal for circulation changes and traffic calming measures to the Inner Richmond community for feedback. Based on feedback received at and since this meeting, the project team is refining its proposal, which is now official designated a 1-year pilot project. This revised proposal will be shared with the community before an official SFMTA Public Hearing on the project in Winter 2018.

If you'd like to receive email updates about events or milestones for this project, please sign up for updates, please follow the "Receive Updates" link on the right column. For a summary of documented community issues and more about the Neighborway concept below.

8th Avenue Community Concerns:

Thanks to those who gave input to Livable Streets on safety issues in the neighborhood at our information table event in October 2016, our March 2017 Open House, our October 2017 Open House, and through our online survey. We reviewed these comments and have documented the following top community concerns:

High levels of traffic and congestion on 8th Avenue - including personal vehicles, tour buses, commercial vehicles, and bicycles

Conflicts between tour buses, commercial vehicles, and personal vehicles - including double parking around Clement Street and the Safeway loading dock between Fulton and Cabrillo

Safety/visibility issues for pedestrians when crossing Fulton and Geary

Conflicts between people biking and high levels of vehicle traffic

What is a Neighborway?

The 8th Avenue Neighborway project will investigate a variety of traffic calming measures aimed at creating a neighborway, which is defined as a residential street with low volumes of auto traffic and low vehicle speeds where bicycles and pedestrians are given priority over motor vehicle traffic (especially “cut-through” traffic). Residents of neighborway streets benefit from reduced vehicular traffic on their street and lower vehicle speeds, while neighbors who walk or bike to Golden Gate Park or the Presidio and beyond will benefit by having a calm, slow-traffic street on which to reach their destination. Some possible traffic calming measures that could be used to create a Neighborway are:

Speed humps

Traffic circles

Traffic Diverters (concrete elements that allow bicycles and pedestrians to pass freely but divert car traffic to other routes)

Forced turns for vehicles or turn prohibitions for vehicles

Traffic Islands

Signage

Pavement markings

Schedule

The SFMTA hosted a public open house meeting to gather community feedback on traffic calming and safety improvement options on October 18, 2017. To view a selection of the materials that were shared at the October 18 and March 11 Open Houses, please follow in links in the Documents section.